CALL FOR MEMBERSHIP APPLICATIONS: International Land Coalition. Every two years, the International Land Coalition (ILC) launches an open call inviting interested organisations to apply for membership through a formal application. The applications received during the current period will be voted upon by ILC members at the next Assembly of Members in Senegal in 2015. Deadline: January 23, 2015

EMPLOYMENT: CIMMYT Cropping Systems Agronomist / Scientist. The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center seeks a scientist for the Nairobi-based position of Cropping System Agronomist to work as a member of CIMMYT’s Global Conservation Agriculture Program, and to contribute to a multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional team applying systems approaches for agricultural research. Deadline: June 6, 2014

PUBLICATION: Women’s individual and joint property ownership

An IFPRI Discussion Paper looks at the effects of property rights on household decisionmaking.

Increasingly, women’s property rights are seen as important for both equity and efficiency reasons. While there has been debate in the literature about women are better off with individual rights in contrast to rights jointly with their husband, little empirical work has analyzed this question. In this paper, the relationship of women’s individual and joint property ownership and the level of women’s input into household decisionmaking is explored with data from India, Mali, Malawi, and Tanzania. In the three African countries, women with individual landownership have greater input into household decisionmaking than women whose landownership is joint; both have more input than women who are not landowners. The relationship with other household decisions is more mixed, as is the relationship between housing and input into household decisionmaking. No similar relationship is found in Orissa, India.

We develop the climate finance-gender equity framework in this paper and use the ‘contextual-procedural-distributive’ equity as a lens of analysis to examine how climate finance helps challenge, and reinforce, gender inequities in the mitigation, adaptation and disaster management strategies. Focusing on the examples of tree-planting, smart-agriculture and disaster information dissemination projects, this paper argues that climate finance can achieve gender equity if three aspects are critically considered: (1) how different incentives and preferences, between men and women, are shaped by their livelihood experiences and priorities, and what factors enable, and restrict, their access to resources; (2) how formal and informal participatory arena offers a genuine space for women, and men, to make decisions that empower them; and (3) how women’s practical and strategic needs are met and the contradictions resolved. This paper also suggests that climate finance needs to address and challenge unequal socio-political arrangements, such as access to land rights, that help perpetuate gender inequities.

EMPLOYMENT: CIMMYT Cropping Systems Agronomist / Scientist

The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) seekS a scientist for the position of Cropping System Agronomist to work as a member of CIMMYT’s Global Conservation Agriculture Program, and to contribute to a multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional team applying systems approaches for agricultural research.

The position will be based in Kenya (Nairobi), with the objective of exploring alternative cropping and farming systems for increased productivity, efficiency, resilience and adaptive capacity of smallholder farmers in that region.

Specific duties of this position include:

Work with the Project Coordinators and hub teams, as well as with the National Agricultural Research Systems and other key partners, to establish agronomic and mechanization trials and demonstrations, and provide advanced analyses to study the effects of sustainable intensification on system productivity, soil quality, water and nutrient use efficiency and pest and disease dynamics across the target area.

Contribute to field and farm modeling of long-term research results in southern Africa and through collaborative efforts with other farm simulation groups.

Help develop innovation systems focused on the adaption of sustainable intensification practices to the circumstances of small-scale, resource-constrained farmers in Eastern Africa and elsewhere.

Collaborate with CIMMYT international scientists to analyze farmers adaptation and use of new machineries and cropping practices.

Communicate research results to various audiences and in various forms, prepare technical reports, papers for publication and presentations of results of this research.

Provide practical training to researchers from national research programs and extension agents in the principles and practice of sustainable intensification as well as CA equipment and machinery.

CALL FOR MEMBERSHIP APPLICATIONS: International Land Coalition

Every two years, the International Land Coalition (ILC) launches an open call inviting interested organisations to apply for membership through a formal application. The applications received during the current period will be voted upon by ILC members at the next Assembly of Members in Senegal in 2015.

Intergovernmental organisations and civil society organisations – including farmer’s organisations, non-governmental organisations, and research institutes – that share the ILC vision and mission are encouraged to apply:

Our vision - Secure and equitable access to and control over land reduces poverty and contributes to identity, dignity and inclusion

Our mission - ILC is a global alliance of civil society and intergovernmental organisations working together to promote secure and equitable access to and control over land for poor women and men through advocacy, dialogue, knowledge sharing, and capacity building

Individuals, governments, and private sector actors such as corporations are not eligible for ILC membership.

Please circulate this announcement to any organizations that may be interested. Application forms are available here. The call for applications is also available in Spanish and French:

The CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) Flagship 4 on Policies and institutions for climate-resilient food systems is opening a call on a desk study featuring climate change governance and institutions research contributing towards development outcomes.

We are contextualising institutions and governance broadly, to include any structures, mechanisms, formal or informal rules that govern social interactions and individual behaviour in ‘institutions’; and formal and informal processes and mechanisms contributing to frameworks, rules and actions that produce, maintain and regulate a particular system in ‘governance’.

This call is part of this process of identifying a research agenda for CCAFS on governance, institutions and engagement. We aim to identify well-defined research areas where CCAFS can meaningfully contribute toward a broader global research agenda on governance, while building on its strengths. Through this process, we are also keen to establish new partnerships with key institutions engaged in this research agenda.

Research should focus on but not be restricted to CCAFS target regions. It is expected to innovatively contribute towards these flagship targets:

2025 Target: By 2025, equitable institutional investments in climate smart food systems will have increased by 50% in 25 national jurisdictions (compared with 2014)

2019 Target: By 2019, equitable institutional investments in climate smart food systems by ten major subnational, national, regional and global organisations will be informed using knowledge, tools and approaches derived from CCAFS science.

EMPLOYMENT: Postdoctoral Fellowship in Social Impacts of Technology at Michigan State University

Dr. Shelia Cotten, a professor in the Telecommunication, Information Studies, and Media (TISM) department at Michigan State University (MSU), is seeking to hire a Postdoctoral Fellow for a 1 year position. The position is available beginning as soon as July 1, 2014. The postdoc will work with Dr. Cotten to analyze data from existing research projects and to collect survey, interview, and observational data on upcoming research projects. Projects focus on technology usage across the life course and the social impacts of this usage, thus experience studying either specific age groups, and/or the impacts of technology use, would be preferable but is not required. Dr. Cotten studies the intersections of technology use and health. With funding from the National Science Foundation, she has also collected data on one of the largest One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) XO laptop disseminations in the United States. She, with funding from a large National Institute on Aging grant, has conducted a randomized trial to determine the impacts on quality of life of training older adults in assisted and independent living communities to use computers and the Internet. Her current NSF-funded project, Integrating Computing Across the Curriculum (ICAC), a large school system intervention, focuses on outcomes of computer technology and computer technology training programs for students and teachers.

Applicants must have defended their dissertation prior to beginning the postdoctoral fellowship. A doctoral degree in Sociology, Psychology, Communication, New Media, Information Science or a related field is required. Candidates must have (1) strong quantitative analysis skills, (2) experience writing manuscripts, and (3) good organizational and time management skills. Prior publications and grant writing experience will enhance the application.The Postdoctoral Fellow is a 12 month, full-time appointment, with salary up to $45,000 depending upon qualifications. Benefits are also provided. See http://grad.msu.edu/pdo/ and http://www.hr.msu.edu/benefits/ for more information on postdoctoral training and benefits at MSU.

TRAINING: Net-Map Certification Training in Washington, DC. Net-Map is an interview-based mapping tool that helps people understand, visualize, discuss, and improve situations in which many different actors influence outcomes. A certification course will be held in Washington, DC, on June 27-28. Deadline: open

EMPLOYMENT: CIMMYT Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Specialist (Zimbabwe based). The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center is seeking a monitoring, evaluation and learning (ME&L) specialist to oversee and implement the ME&L activities of a large multi-country multi-partner project, “Sustainable intensification of maize-legume cropping systems for food security in eastern and southern Africa”. Deadline: May 26, 2014

ONLINE RESOURCE: Land–-Open Access Journal. A fairly new open access journal may be of interest to readers interested in land issues. Land is an international and cross-disciplinary journal of land resources and soil science.

PUBLICATION: Property rights and sustainable irrigation: A developing country perspective

A new (open access) paper by Ruth Meinzen-Dick in the journal Agricultural Water Management:

While the role of secure property rights contributing to sustainable natural resource management is increasingly recognized, translating that into practice is more challenging, especially in developing countries. This article presents a framework for understanding the role of property rights for effective irrigation systems and then explores the complexity of property rights to land, water, and infrastructure and their underlying institutions. Understanding property rights in practice requires acknowledging legal pluralism—the coexistence of many types and sources of law, which can be used as the basis for claiming rights over the resources. Property rights do not necessarily imply full ownership, but are composed of different bundles of rights that may be held by different claimants—the state, user groups, families, or individuals. These rights are critical for the authority, incentives, and resources for irrigation operation and maintenance. As resources become more scarce, property rights systems need to adapt to reduce conflict and provide incentives for saving water. However, efforts to improve irrigation by changing property rights systems have often failed because they have not recognized the difficulty of transplanting property rights systems from one place to another. Institutional change needs to be seen as an organic process, building on existing norms and practices, rather than as an exercise in social engineering.

PUBLICATION: Efficiency and productivity differential effects of land certification program in Ethiopia

Although theory predicts that better property rights to land can increase land productivity through tenure security effects (investment effects) and through more efficient input use due to enhanced tradability of the land (factor intensity effect), empirical studies on the size and magnitude of these effects are very scarce. Taking advantage of a unique quasi-experi-mental survey design, this study analyzes the productivity impacts of the Ethiopian land certification program by identify-ing how the investment effects (technological gains) would measure up against the benefits from any improvements in input use intensity (technical efficiency). For this purpose, we adopted a data envelopment analysis–based Malmquist-type productivity index to decompose productivity differences into (1) within-group farm efficiency differences, reflecting the technical efficiency effect, and (2) differences in the group production frontier, reflecting the long-term investment (technological) effects. The results show that farms without a land use certificate are, on aggregate, less productive than those with formalized use rights. We found no evidence to suggest this productivity difference is due to inferior technical efficiency. Rather, the reason is down to technological advantages, or a favorable investment effect, from which farm plots with a land use certificate benefit when evaluated against farms not included in the certification program. The low level of within-group efficiency of farms in each group reinforces the argument that certification programs need to be ac-companied by complementary measures such as an improved financial and legal institutional framework in order to achieve the promised effects.

EMPLOYMENT: World Water Assessment Programme Publications Officer

The World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP) is a United Nations system‐wide effort that monitors and reports on the status of global freshwater resources and their management. WWAP is hosted and led by UNESCO, and notably produces the annual United Nations World Water Development Report, collaborating with and reporting to the 36 UN agencies comprising UN Water.

The WWAP Secretariat is located in Perugia, Italy.

Description of position:

Operating under the overall supervision of the WWAP Coordinator and the direct supervision of the WWDR programme Officer, in close collaboration with all members of the WWAP Secretariat, the Publications Officer is requested to collaborate in managing the workload and flow of the programme’s publishing activities.

Core responsibilities include:

Contribute substantively to formulating/updating objectives, strategies and results‐based budgeting for the WWAP Publishing Section and other outreach activities, ensuring alignment with WWAP mission and priorities.

Assist in coordinating editorial, prepress and production processes for all WWAP print and online publications, including the WWDR series (for WWDR2015 and WWDR2016) reprints and translations; prepare schedules, monitor budgets, assess time, costs and resources needed for publication projects.

Monitor reproduction of WWAP publications and use of visual identity and logos; ensure design cohesiveness of publications, documents and promotional material; maintain graphics and photograph archives for print and Web reproduction.

TRAINING: Net-Map Certification Training in Washington, DC

Net-Map is an interview-based mapping tool that helps people understand, visualize, discuss, and improve situations in which many different actors influence outcomes. By creating Influence Network Maps, individuals and groups can clarify their own view of a situation, foster discussion, and develop a strategic approach to their networking activities.

A Net-Map certification course will be held in Washington, DC, on June 27-28, 2014.

Participants will learn to draw Net-Maps to structure their own thought processes, in one-on-one consultations and in group sessions. They will understand the typical structural issues in influence network, which will increase their network mapping facilitation skills.

Participants will work on their case studies from their own work experience. This has the benefit that, while learning the method, they will also develop a concrete networking plan of action for an issue relevant to their work. Also, this will make implementing Net-Map in future work related cases easier.

Tuesday, May 06, 2014

The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) is seeking a monitoring, evaluation and learning (ME&L) specialist to oversee and implement the ME&L activities of a large multi-country multi-partner project, “Sustainable intensification of maize-legume cropping systems for food security in eastern and southern Africa” - Phase II (SIMLESA-2). Working with an interdisciplinary team, the successful candidate will bring along relevant expertise and in-depth experiences conceiving, implementing and rationalizing ME&L approaches in agricultural research for development, preferably including impact pathway analysis and theories of change. You will work as a member of CIMMYT’s Socio-Economics Program in close collaboration with CIMMYT’s other programs and with local and international partners.

The position will be based at CIMMYT’s Regional Office in Harare, Zimbabwe with frequent travel to SIMLESA intervention areas in eastern and southern Africa and beyond.

Specific duties of this position include:

Be the focal point for SIMLESA's ME&L; Drive and streamline the associated ME&L planning, implementation, reporting and use.

Provide strategic oversight, guidance and quality control of ME&L, including the use of quantifiable output, outcome and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and of processes for measuring progress against outputs/outcomes/impact pathways at various levels.

In collaboration with the SIMLESA teams, periodically review and revise indicators and processes and draw out lessons/implications for impact pathways, theories of change, Intermediate Development Outcomes, up-scaling and out-scaling strategies and action plans to enhance uptake and impact of our work.

Harmonize the integration of SIMLESA's ME&L into CIMMYT's, including overseeing the quality of information in CIMMYT's Research Management System (RMS) and define and oversee the extraction of project specific indicators for reporting and evaluation purposes.

Work closely with Project Leader and Communications specialists to develop and document compelling outcome and impact success stories and to foster institutionalization and internalization of learning processes.

Contribute to training of project managers, scientists and partners on ME&L methodologies. Provide guidelines to staff and partners on ME&L metrics and categories to effectively monitor current and future research.

ONLINE RESOURCE: Land–Open Access Journal

A fairly new open access journal may be of interest to readers interested in land issues.

Aims:

Land (ISSN 2073-445X) is an international and cross-disciplinary scholarly journal of land resources and soil science. It publishes reviews, regular research papers, communications and short notes, and there is no restriction on the length of the papers. Our aim is to encourage scientists to publish their experimental and theoretical research in as much detail as possible. Full experimental and/or methodical details must be provided for research articles. There are, in addition, unique features of this journal:

manuscripts regarding research proposals and research ideas will be particularly welcomed

computed data or files regarding the full details of the experimental procedure, if unable to be published in a normal way, can be deposited as supplementary material

manuscripts concerning summaries and surveys on research cooperation and projects (that are founded by national governments or others) provide information for a broad field of users.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: International Photo Competition on Forests, Agriculture, and Gender

The competition is called Forests-Agriculture Interface through a Gender Lens. The best photos will be included in a book to be launched at the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) World Congress 2014.

The CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry integrating Gender (CRP-FTA Gender) at the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) is taking a different look at science by publishing a photo book. We would like to reach out to the global audience through interesting photos that tell us a real story by visualizing social and gender dimensions.

Through this International Photo Competition 2014 on the ‘Forest-Agriculture Interface through a Gender Lens’ we aim to publish a photo book (Editor Purabi Bose).

The photo book will reproduce the selected photos with the titles and background stories about the successes and failures of integrating gender equity in forests, agroforestry and the small farms anywhere in the world.

Photos can be submitted within the three key thematic areas with gender as a cross-cutting issue:

CALL FOR PROPOSALS: Benefit-sharing Fund of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture

The Bureau of the Governing Body of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture opened the Third Call for Proposals under the Benefit-sharing Fund of the Treaty on 7 March 2014. The Call will invest more than USD 10 million in projects globally.

The thematic focus of the Call for Proposals 2014, within the three agreed priorities of the Benefit-sharing Fund, is helping to ensure sustainable food security by assisting farmers to adapt to climate change through a targeted set of high impact activities on the conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture.

Any governmental or non-governmental organization, including genebanks and research institutions, farmers and farmers’ organizations, and regional and international organizations, based in eligible countries that are Contracting Parties to the International Treaty, may apply for grants under the Benefit-sharing Fund. The list of eligible Contracting Parties has been prepared based on a complete list of developing countries derived from the most recent World Bank’s classification of economies, as requested by the Governing Body.

EMPLOYMENT: ILRI Senior Social Scientist–Gender. The International Livestock Research Institute seeks to recruit a Senior Social Scientist to lead gender and livestock research and a team of scientists within the Livelihoods, Gender, Impact and Innovations Program under the Integrated Sciences unit. Deadline: May 15, 2014

PUBLICATION: Changes in land tenure and agricultural intensification in sub-Saharan Africa

A UNU-WIDER Working Paper by Keijiro Otsuka and Frank Place:

Due to increasing population pressure on limited cultivable land in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), farm size has been shrinking, fallow periods have been shortened, and soil fertility has been declining. In accordance with the Boserupian evolutionary theory and the Hayami-Ruttan induced innovation theory, however, investments in land improvements have taken place, which leads to strengthened individual land rights and the intensification of farming systems in many other parts of SSA. Based on the literature review, this paper argues that such evolutionary and spontaneous changes should be supported by means of technology development and dissemination, formalization of land rights, and improvement of access to agricultural markets.

PUBLICATION: Land, assets, and livelihoods

A new IFPRI Discussion Paper provides a gendered analysis of evidence from Odisha state in India:

Although asset-based approaches for studying poverty have shown that the portfolio of assets households own or can access influences livelihood strategies and a variety of development outcomes, there is little research unpacking gendered dimensions of asset ownership in diverse contexts. Using data collected from the evaluation of two government land titling interventions in the Indian state of Odisha, this paper examines key relationships linking land and livelihood strategies. The investigation is one of the first to explicitly use the Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project framework to gain additional insights on how gender–asset dynamics relate to household livelihood strategies. Our results point to a gender-segregated wage labor market, where employment opportunities for rural women are limited; education for both men and women can enable the adoption of more food secure livelihood strategies; and a significant link exists between households that adopt more food secure livelihood strategies and the amount of land they can access, whether they own the land, and the share of land owned by the woman. These results suggest that development interventions to enable households to adopt improved livelihood strategies must consider the gendered context in which they operate, including men and women’s employment opportunities, their skills and asset holdings, and make explicit efforts to address constraints in order to facilitate improved development outcomes.

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS: The Norman Borlaug Award for Field Research and Application

Endowed by the Rockefeller Foundation, this is a $10,000 award to be presented annually to a young extension worker, research scientist, development professional or other individual who best emulates the dedication, perseverance, and innovation demonstrated by Dr. Norman Borlaug while working in the field with farmers in Mexico in the 1940s and '50s. The award will be presented every October in Des Moines, Iowa, by the World Food Prize Foundation.

This award will recognize exceptional, science-based achievement in international agriculture and food production by an individual under 40 who has clearly demonstrated intellectual courage, stamina, and determination in the fight to eliminate global hunger and poverty.

The award will honor an individual who is working closely and directly “in the field” or at the production or processing level with farmers, animal herders, fishers or others in rural communities, in any discipline or enterprise across the entire food production, processing, and distribution chain. Nominations will be accepted through June 30.

A new journal, the Journal of Gender, Agriculture and food Security (Agri-Gender) has been launched with the aim of providing a platform for researchers and practitioners to share information on research work on gender, agriculture and food security. The aim of Agri-Gender is to promote interdisciplinary research related to gender and the agricultural and food sciences.

It is an open access, peer-reviewed and refereed journal that will publish in the fields of agriculture including livestock, fisheries, crop sciences, agriculture economics, rural development, food security and nutrition as they relate to gender. The journal will also publish papers on issues of women’s empowerment, feminist and gender studies. It seeks to promote debate, identify best practices and new ideas and make the links between theoretical and practical gender and agriculture work. It will combine rigorous research with insights from development initiatives across the world that have implications for policy and practice in promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women in the agriculture and food related sectors. The editors of the journal are drawn from research and academia across the globe.